Authorities in the state are barred from inspecting the homes or even keeping track of them. (New Beginnings has operated under multiple names in Florida, Mississippi, and Texas.) “It’s hard to understand it, but faith-based is just taboo for regulation,” says Matthew Franck, an editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who authored an investigative series on the state’s homes in the mid-2000s. “It took decades of work to get just the most minimal standards of regulation at faith-based child-care centers,” he adds. “I just knew that when certain lobbyists would stand up to say, ‘We have a concern about how this affects faith-based institutions,’ the bill was immediately amended—it was a very Republican legislature—or it would immediately die. That’s still true.”

That is terrifying, especially when you read about what goes on there.

The girls’ behavior was micromanaged down to the number of squares of toilet paper each was allowed; potential infractions ranged from making eye contact with another girl to not finishing a meal. Roxy, who suffered from urinary tract infections and menstrual complications, told me she was frequently put on redshirt, sometimes dripping blood as she stood. She was also punished with cold showers, she said, and endless sets of calisthenics after meals.

There are a lot of these places, though it’s unclear exactly how many.

New Beginnings is emblematic of an unknown number of “troubled teen” homes catering to the Independent Fundamental Baptist community—a web of thousands of autonomous churches linked by doctrine, overlapping leadership, and affiliations with Bible colleges like Bob Jones University. IFB churches emphasize strict obedience and consider teen rebellion an invention of worldly society, so it’s little surprise that families faced with teenage drinking, smoking, or truancy might turn to programs promising a tough-love fix. Fear of government intrusion—particularly on account of the community’s “spare the rod, spoil the child” worldview—is so pervasive that IFB congregations are primed to dismiss regulatory actions against abusive facilities as religious persecution.

Well quite – they’re afraid the gummint will tell them to stop hitting the child with the rod, so they paint themselves as martyrs to religious persecution. The teenagers they’re torturing, on the other hand, are just sinners.

13 Responses to “The Christian Alamo”

So, just as Ireland gets around to condemning the horrors of the Magdalene schools, American evangelicals are building their own. And here I thought Hitchens might be exaggerating when he said that religion poisons everything. Silly me.

We would have the amendments we need, if someone was willing to bring the cases (which I’m fairly sure they aren’t): these girls are being imprisoned without due process–and in many cases without a crime even being alleged–which is a violation of their rights under the fifth and fourteenth amendments.

Actually Ophelia, the defense argument to a 5th or 14th Amendment claim would be simpler than that: these homes are not state actors. Those amendments (like almost all of the Constitution) apply to the government, not to private persons. Even if these organizations receive tax breaks or funding, that likely doesn’t make them state actors. (There is a point at which that line can be crossed — I believe that private prisons are held to be state actors. But my understanding is that these homes are not places that the state has ordered the girls to be held, just places where messed-up parents send their daughters.)

There may be all kinds of crimes and torts involved: false imprisonment, battery, child abuse and neglect, to name a few. Just not a violation of the Constitution.

There may be all kinds of crimes and torts involved: false imprisonment, battery, child abuse and neglect, to name a few. Just not a violation of the Constitution.

Which is what makes these so much harder to deal with. Keeping it at the local level at will keep it getting pushed under the rug and off the radar. Most communities take the ‘if I can’t see it it isn’t there’ attitude towards whatever might make them look bad.

There may be all kinds of crimes and torts involved: false imprisonment, battery, child abuse and neglect, to name a few. Just not a violation of the Constitution.

The problem is that the argue that the state interference in their organization is a violation of the constitution (free expression clause). It’s absurd, sort of like claiming that murder is part of your religion, so prosecuting someone for murder is a violation of the constitution. However, they have gotten away with this line of reasoning in the past, so there is precedent that can’t easily be overturned.

Furthermore, they will also argue that they’re just acting “in loco parentis” with consent of the parents and are therefore permitted to use violence, confinement and forced labour against the children to discipline them. If you’re asking “where do the rights of the children come into this”, don’t bother. Somehow, once you wrap it in the drape of religion, what few rights children do enjoy are almost completely co-opted unless it leaves permanent physical damage.

Furthermore, they will also argue that they’re just acting “in loco parentis” with consent of the parents and are therefore permitted to use violence, confinement and forced labour against the children to discipline them.

But surely even parents are limited in what they can do under the excuse of religious freedom, or any excuse really.